DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 232 201 CS 207 753 AUTHOR Glasser, Theodore L. TITLE Objectivity and the Ideology of . pus DATE Mar 83 NOTE 17p.; Lecture delivered at an "Ethics in " Seminar (University of Minnesota, March 3-4, 1983). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150)-- Viewpoints (120) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Bias; Court Litigation; *Ethics; *Freedomof Speech; *Journalism; *News Reporting; News Writing; *Social Responsibility ABSTRACT A 1977 t.:ourt of Appeals decision, "Edwardsv. National Audubon Society," outlined the principleof "neutral reportage": the press is not required tosuppress newsworthy statements by public officials merely because the truthof those statements is doubtful. The author outlines this courtcase because it illustrates so well theconsequences of the ethic of objectivity that has developed in journalism since the rise of themass press in the 1800s. Originally a response to economicpressures, objectivity has become an ideal to strive for. Inan effort to remain free from unrecognized prejudgments, have concentratedon reporting rather than interpreting news, using themselves largelyas vehicles for their sources' arguments, rebuttals, explanations,and criticisms. Nevertheless, their reportingreveals bias. In relying on official sources, reporters favor the prominentand established. Trying to record rather than interpret, journalistsundervalue independent thinking as they obscure theirown role in choosing and news. This ethic of objectivity is foundedon a naive belief in a single reality derived from empiricalfacts. American journalism will not become truly responsible until it recognizesthat facts and values are inseparable. (MM)

*********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRSare the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER IERICI OBJECTIVITY AND THE IDEOLOGY OF NEWS 74.,..This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization onginating it Minor changes have ben made io improve r""I zeprodmmnquatY Theodore L. Glasser Points of view or opinions stated in this docu CD ment do not necessarily represent official NIE (%1 position or policy. (NJ University of Minnesota PeN CJ I would like to begin by outlining my conclusions and then, given C:3 LAJ the constraints of time, try to explain how I arrived at those

conclusions.

First,let me define a few terms. By objectivity Imean

something broader and more encompassing than impartiality and

fairness. By objectivity I mean a particular view of journalism and

the press,a frame of reference used by journalists to orient

themselves in the and in the community.By objectivity I

mean, to a degree, ideology; where ideology is defined as a kind of

secular religion,a set of beliefs that function as the 's

"claim to action."

As a set of beliefs, objectivity appears to be rooted in a

positivist view of the world, an enduring commitment to the supremacy

of observable and retrievable facts. This commitment, in turn,

impinges on the 's principal commodity--the day's news. Thus

my argument, in part, is this: today's news is indeed biased--as it

must inevitably be--and this bias can be best understood by

understanding the concept, the conventions, and the ethic of

objectivity.

Lecture delivered atan "Ethics in Journalism" seminar co-sponsored by Augsburg College and the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Journalism Center, March 3-4, 1983. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GPANTED BY Theodore L. Glasser

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." Specifically, objectivity in journalismaccounts for--or at least

helps us understand--threeprincipal developmentsin American

journalism; and each of thesedevelopments contributes to the biasor

ideology of news. First, objective reporting is biased againstwhat

the press typically definesas its role ih a democracy--that of a

Fourth.Estate, the watchdog role,an adversary press. Indeed,

objectivity in journalism is biased infavor of the status citio;it is

inherently conservative to theextent that it encourages reporters to

rely on what sociologist AlvinGouldner so appropriately describesas

the "managers of the statusquo"--the prominent and the elite.

Second, objective reporting is biased againstindependent thinking; it emasculates the intellect by treating itas a disinterested 4ectator.

Finally, objective reporting is biasedagainst the very idea of responsibility; the day's news is viewedas something journalists are compelled to report, not something theyare responsible for creating.

,This last point, I think, ismost important. Despite a renewed interest in professional ethics, ethics injournalism continue to evade questions of morality and responsibility. Of course, this doesn't mean that journalistare immoral. Rather, it means that journalist today are largely amoral;and certainly the amorality of journalism is centraltoa seminar devoted to the subject of journalistic ethics.

My main conclusion is simply this:objectivity in journalism effectively erodes the very moral foundationwhich rests on a responsible press.

2 It may seem somewhat ofa paradox for me to argue that the ethic

of objectivity undermines ethicsin journalism. But Ihope to

demonstrate that this is nota paradox at all because, in the end,

objectivity is not an ethic.

The Concept and Conventions of

Objective Reporting

By most any account of the history ofobjectivity in journalism--

and there have been many--objectivereporting began more as a commercisal imperative thanas a standard of responsible reporting.

With the emergence of a truly popularpress in the mid-1800s--the penney press--a press neithr.tr tied to the politicalparties nor the business elite, objectivity provideda presumably disinterested view of the world.

But the penney press didn't literallycause objective reporting.

It was one of many social, economic,political, and technological forces that converged in the mid andlate 1800s to bring about fundamental and lasting changes in Americanjournalism. There was the advent of the telegraph, which forthe first time separated communication from transportation.There were radical changes in printing technology, including thesteampowered press and later the rotary press. There was the formation of tr! AssociatedPress, an early effort by publishers to monopolizea new technology--in this case the telegraph. There was, finally, the demise of communityand

3 the rise of society; therewere now cities, properly defined as "human: settlements" where "strangers are likely to meet."

These are some of the many conditions that created the climate for objective reporting, a climate best understood in terms of the emergence of a new mass press and the need for that press to operate efficiently in the marketplace.

Efficiency is the key term here, for efficiency is the central meaning of objective reporting. It was efficient for the Associate

Press to distribute only the "bare facts," and leave the opportunity for interpretation to individual members of the cooperative. It was efficient for not to offend readers and advertisers with partisan prose. It was efficient--perhaps expedient--for reporteres to distance themselves from the sense and substance of what they. reported.

To survive in the marketplace, and to enhance its status as a new and more democratic press, journalists-- principally publishers, who were becoming a more and more removed from the editing and writing process--began to transform efficiency into a standard of professional competenc, a standard later--several decades later--described in terms of objectivity. This transformation was aided by two important developments in early twentieth century: first, Oliver Wendell

Holmes' effort to employ a marketplace metaphor to define the meaning of the First Amendment; and second, the growing popularity of the

4 scientific method as the proper tool with which todiscover and

understand an increasinglyalien reality. In a dissenting opinion in 1919, Holmes popularizedthe

marketplace of ideas, a metaphor introduced by John Milton several

centuries earlier. Metaphor or not, publishers took it quite literally. They argued--and continuewith essentially thesame

argument today--that theiropportunity to compete and ultimately survive in the marketplace is their First Amendmentright, a Constitutional privilege. The American Newspaper Publishers

Association, organized in 1887, led the cause of a freepress. In the

name of , theANPA fought the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 on behalf of its adverisers; it foughtthe Post Office Act of 1912, which compelled sworn statements of ownership andcirculation and thus threatened to reveal too much to advertisers;it fought

efforts to regulate child labor,which world interfer with the control and exploitation of paper boys; it fought the collectivebargaining provisions of the Wttional Recovery Act in the mid-1930's; forsimilar reasons, it stood opposed tothe American Newspaper Guild,the reporters' urion; it tried--fortunatlyunsuccessfully--to prevent the wire services from sellingnews to radio stations until after publication in the nearbynewspaper.

Beyond using the First Amendment to shield and protectits economic interests in the marketplace,publisherswere also able to use the canons of science to justify--indeed,legitimate--the canons of objective reporting. Here publishers were comfortedby Walter Lippmann's writings in the early 1920s, particularly his pleafor a

5 new ,a new realism; a call for journalists to

remain "clear and free" oftheir irrational, their unexamined,their unacknowledged prejudgments.

scientific journalism,a new realism; a call for jounaliststo remain

"clear and free" of theirirrational,their unexamined, their unacknowledged prejudgments.

By the early 1900s objectivityhad become the acceptableway of

doing reporting--or at leastthe respectable way. It was respectable

because it was reliable, andit was reliable because itwas standardized. In practice, this meant a preoccupation withhow the

news was presented, whether its formwas reliable. And this concern for reliability quickly overshadowed any concern for the validityof

the realities the journalistspresented.

Thus emerged the conventions ofobjective reporting, a set of

routine procedures journalistsuse to objectify their news stories. These are the conventions sociologist Gaye Tuchman describedas a kind of strategy journalists use to to deflect criticism, thesame kind of

strategy scientists use to defendthe quality of their work. For the

journalist, this means interviewswith official sources; and it

ordinarily means officialsources with impeccable credentials. It

means juxtaposing conflicting truth claims,where truth-claims are reported as "fact" regardlessof their validity. It means making a judgment about the news value ofa truth-claim even if that judgment only serves to lend authorityto what is known to be false.

6 The Ethic of Objectivity

As early as 1924 objectivity appeared as an ethic, an ideal subordinate to only truth itself. That year, his study of the Ethics of Journalism, Nelson Crawford devoted three full chapters to the principles of objectivity. Thirty years later, in 1954, Louis Lyons, then curator for the Nieman Fellowshipprogram at Harvard, was describing objectivity as a "rock-bottom" imperative.Apparently unfazed by Wisconsin's Senator McCarthy, Lyons portrayed objectivity as the ultimate discipline of journalism."It is at the bottom of all sound reporting--indispensible as, the core of the writer's capacity."

More recently, in 19/3,the 30,000 members of the Society of

Professional Journalist, Sigma Delta Chi, formally enshrined the idea of objectivity when they adopted as part of their "code of ethics"a paragraph characterizing objective reporting as an attainable goal and a standard of performance tcpAard which journalists should strive. "We honor those who achieve it," the Society proclaimed.

So well ingrained are the principles of objective reporting that the judiciary is beginning to acknowledge them, In a 1977 Court of

Appeals decision,Edwards v.National Audubon :Society,a case described by media attorney Floyd Abrams as a landmark decision in that it may prove to be the next evolutionary stage in the development of the public law of libel, a new and novel privilege emerged. It was the first time the courts explicity recognized objective reportingas a standard of journalism worthy of First Amendment protection.

7 In what appeared to bean inconsequential story published in the

New York Times in 1972--onpage 33--five scientists were accused of

being paid liars, men,paid bythe pesticide industry to lie about the

use of DDT and its effect on bird life. True to the form of objective

reporting, the accusationwas fully attributed--to a fully identified official of the National AudubonSociety. The scientists, of course, were given an opportunity to deny the accusation. Onlyone of the scientists, however,was quoted by name and he described the accusation as "almost libelous."What was newsworthy about the story, obviously, was the accusation;and with the exception ofone short paragraph, the reporter moreor less provided a forum for the

National Audubon Society.

Three of the five scientistsfiled suit. While denying punitive damages, a jury awarded compensatorydamages against the Times and one of the Society's officials. The Times,in turn, asked a federal

District Court to overturn the verdict.The Times argued that the

"actual malice" standard hadnot been met; in other words, since the scientists were "public figures,"they were required to show that the

Times knowingly publisheda falsehood or there was, on the part of the

Times, a reckless disregard forwhether the accusation was trueor false. The evidence before the courtclearly indicated the latter-- there was indeed a reckless disregardfor whether the accusationwas true or false. The reporter made virtuallyno effort to confirm the validity of the National AudubonSociety's accusations. Also the

8 story wasn't the kind of "hot newl" (a technical term used by the courts) that required immediate dissemination; in fact ten days before the story was published the Times learned that two of the five scientists were not employed by the pesticide industry, and thus were not "paia liars."

The Times appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, where the lower court's decisison was, in the end, overturned. In reversing the District Court, the Court of Appeals created a new First Amendment right, a new constitutional defense in libel law--the privilege of

"neutral reportage." "We do not believe," the Court of Appeals ruled,

"that the press may be required to suppress newsworthy statements merely because it has serious doubts regarding their truth." In other

words, to quote the Court again, "the First Amendment protects the

accurate and disinterested reporting" of newsworthy accusations

"regardless of the reporter's private views regarding their validity."

I mention the details of the Edwards case only because it

illustrates so well the consequences of the ethic of objectivity.

First, it illustrates a very basic tension between objectivity and

responsibility.Objective reporting virtually precludes responsible

reporting, if by responsible reporting we mean a willingness on the

part of the reporter to be accountable for what is reported.

Objectivity requires only that reporters be accountable for how they

report, not what they report. The Edwards Court made this very clear:

"The public interest in being fully informed," the Court said, demands

9 iu that the press be affordedthe freedom to report newsworthy

accusations "without assuming responsibilityfor them."

Second, the Edwardscase illustrates the unfortunate bias of

objective reporting--a bias infavor of leaders and officials, the

prominent and the elite. It is an unfortunate bias because itruns

counter to the important democraticassumption that statements made by

ordinary citizens areas valuable as statements made by the prominent

and the elite. In a democracy, public debatedepends on separating

individuals from theirpowers and privileges in the larger society;

otherwise debate itself becomesa source of domination. But Edwards

reinforces prominenceas a news value, since the privilege of neutral

reportage applies only tostatements made by public figures. Edwards

reinforces the use of officialsources, official records, official channels. Tom Wicker underscored the biasof the Edwards case when he observed that "objective journa*lismalmost always favors Establishment positions and exists not leastto avoid offense to them."

Objectivity and the Politics

of Newsmaking

Objectivity also has unfortu,-ateconsequences for the reporter, the individual journalist. Objective reporting has strippedreporters of their creativity and their imagination; it has robbedjournalists of their passion and theirperspective. Objective reporting has transformed journalism intosomething more technical than

10 intellectual; it has turned the art of story-telling into the technique of report-writing. And most unfortunate of all, objective reporting has denied.journalists their citzenship;as disinterested observers, as impartial reporters, journalistsare expected to be morally disengaged and politically inactive.

Journalists have become--to borrow Jim Carey's terminology--

"professional communicators," a relatively passive linkbetwen sources and audiences. With neither the need nor the opportunity to developa critical perspective from which toassess the events, the issues, and the personalities they are assigned tocover,the objective reporter tends to function asa translator--translating the specialized language of his or her sources intoa language intelligible to a lay audience.

In his frequently cited study of Washington correspondents--a study published nearly 50 years ago--Leo Rostenfound that a

"pronounced majority" of the journalists he interviewedoften considered themselves inadequate tocope with the bewildering complexities of our nation's policies and politics. As Rosten described them, the Washingtonpress corps was a frustrated and exasperated group of prominent journalistsmore or less resigned to their role as mediators, translators."To do the job," one reporter told Rosten, "what you know or understand isn't important. You've got to know whom to ask." Even if you don't understand what's being said,

Rosten was told, just take careful notes and write itup verbatim. *Let my readers figure itout. I'm their reporter,not their teacher."

That was fifty Yearsago. Today--it's pretty much thesame thing. Two years ago another studyof Washington correspondentswas published--a book by Stephen Hess called The WasAingtonReporters. For the most part, Hess found, stories coming out.ofWashington were little more than a "mosiaic of facts and quotations fromsources" who

were participants in an eventor who had knowledge about the event.

Incredibly, Hess found that fornearly three-quarters ofthe stories he studied, reporters relied on no documents--only interviews. And when reporters did use documents, those documentswere typically press clippings--stories they wroteor stories written by their colleagues. And so what does objectivity mean? It means thatsources supply the sense and substance of the day's news. Sources provide the arguments, the rebuttals. the explanations, the criticism.Sources put forth the ideas while other sources challenge thoseideas.

Journalists, in their roleas professional communicators, merely provide a vehicle for theseexchanges.

But if objectivity means that reporters must maintaina healthy distance from the world they report, the same standard doesnot apply to publishers. According to Stgma DeltaChi's code of ethics, "Journalists and their employers should conduct their personallives in a manner which protects them from conflict of interest,real or apparent." Many journalists do justthat--they avoid evenan

12 appearance of a conflict of interest. But certainly not their

employers.

If it would be a tonflict of interestfor a reporter to accept,

say, an expensive piano from a source at theSteinway Piano Company,

it apparently wasn'ta conflict of interest when CBS purchased the

Steinway Piano Company.

Publishers and broadcasters todayare part of a large and growing

industry, an increasingly diversifiedindustry. Not only are many

newspapers owned by corporations whichown a variety of non-media

properties, but their boards of directorsread like a who's who among

) the powerful and elite. A recent study of the 25 largestnewspaper

companies found that the directorsof these companies tend to be

linked with "powerful businessorganizations, not with public interest

croups; with management, not with labor; with wellestablished think

tanks and charities, not theirgrassroots counterparts."

But publishers contend that theseconnections have no bearing on

how the day's new is reported--as thoughthe ownership of a newspaper

has no bearing in the newspaper's content;as though business

decisions have no effect on editorial decisions;as though it wasn't

economic considerations in thefirst place that brought about the

incentives for many of the conventionsof contemporary journalism.

Objectivity and the Amorality

of Journalism

To question the value of objectivityis not necessarily to question the value of fair reporting or to question the value of a reporter's integrity. As I said at the outset, by objectivity Imean

something broader and more encompassing than impartiality and fairness.

No doubt the press has responded to many of the more serious

consequences of objective reporting. But what is significant is that the response has been to amend the conventions of objectivity, not to

abandon thenh The prass has only refined the canons of objective

reporting; it has not dislodged them.

What remains fundamentally unchanged is the journalist's naively empirical view of the world, a belief in the separatiaon of factssand values,a belief in the existence of a reality--the reality of

empirical facts. Nowhere is this belief more evident than when news is defined as something external to--and independent of--the

'journalist.The veryvocabulary used by journalists when they talk

about news underscores their belief thatnaws is "out there," presumably waiting to be exposed or uncoveredor at least gathered.

This is the essence cf objectivity, and this is precisely why it

is so very difficult for journalism to consider questions of ethics and morality. Since news exists "out there"--apparently independent of the reporter--journalists can't be held responsible for it.And since they are not responsible for the news being there, how can we expect journalists to be accountable for the consequences of merely reporting it?

14 15 What objectivity has brought about,in short, is a disregard for the consequences of newsmaking. A few years ago Walter Cronkite offered this interpretation of journalism: " I don't think it is any of our business what the moral, political, social, or economic effect of our reporting is. I say let's go with the job of reporting--and let the chips fall where they may."

Contrast that to John Dewey's advice: That "our chief moral business is to become acquainted with consequences."

I am inclined to side with' Dewey. Only to the extent that journalists are held accountable for the consequences of their actions can there be said to be a responsible press.But we are not going to be able to hold journalists accountable for the consequences of their

actions until they acknowledge that news is their creation, a creation for which they are fully responsible.And we are not going to have

much success convincing journalists that news is created,not

reported, until we can successfully challenge the conventions of

objectivity.

The task before us, then, is to liberate journalism from the

burden of objectivity by demonstrating--as convincingly as we can--

that objective reporting is more of a custom than a principle, more a

habit of mind than a standard of performance. And by showing that

objectivity is largely a matter of efficiency--efficiency that serves,

as far as I can tell, only the needs and interests of the owners of

the press,not the needs and interests of talented writers and

certainly not the needs and interests of the larger society. A Selected Bibliography

James W.Carey, ""The Communications Revolution and the Professional Communicator, in Paul Halmos (ed.), "The Sociology of Mass Media Communicators," The Sociological Review, 13 January 1969): 23- 38.

Nelson A. Crawford, The Ethics of Journalism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1924.

Elmer Davis, "News and the Whole Truth," Atlantic Monthly, August 1952, 32-38.

Todd Gitlin, "News as Ideology and Contested Area: Toward a Theory of Hegemony,Crisis, and Opnosition," Socialist Review, 48 (November-December 1979): 11-54.

Theodore L. Glasser, "Newsworthy Accusations and the Privilege of Neutral Reportage," Communication Quarterly, 28 (Spring 1980): 49-56.

Alvin W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technology. New York: The Seabury Press, 1976.

Stephen Hess, The Washington Reporters. Washington, D.C. The Brookings IFiritution, 1981.

Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion. New York: Free Press, 1965 (1922).

Louis Lyons, Reporting the News. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1965.

E. Barbara Phillips, "Approaches to Objectivity:Journalistic and Social Science Perspectives," 63-77 in P.M. Hirsch, P.V. Miller, and F.G. Kline (eds.), Strategies for Communication Research. Beverly Hills: Sage 1977.

Bernard Roshco, Newsmaking. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975.

Dan Schiller, Objectivity and the News. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Pres, 1907

Michael Schudson, Discovering the News. New York: Basic Books, 1978.

Gaye Tuchman, "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual:An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objectivity," American Journal of Sociology, 77 (January 1972): 660-670.

Bernard A. Weisberger, The American Newspaperman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

Tom Wicker, On Press. New York: Viking Press, 1978.

16